Most Tasmanian Councils offer weekly or fortnightly kerbside recycling collections, in common with their counterparts around Australia. They do not all collect the same items, some collect paper only.

Paper , includes:newspapers,magazines,junkmail,cardboard and office paper.Milk Cartons are also collected, both the gable top anf the foillined or aseptic. Most also collect other food and beverage containers. GLASS: brown,green or clear PLASTIC: marked 1,2 or 3 rarely if at all is any plastic collected above the number 3 -this symbol does not mean it is necessarily recyclable but merely an industry code denoting the level or type of recycled material in the product.

Items such as icecream containers marked 5 etc often have reuse possibilities within schools for storage of paints or crafts.

In the interest of waste minimisation butter dishes need not be purchased in favour of the paper wrapped item - when you get it home it can be transferred to a washable dish.

Consumers wishing to recycle should be mindful of the needs of the industry and not mix different types of recyclables unless stated otherwise.

Always remove caps and lids from containers -often plastic lids are made a non-recyclable plastic, but usually caps from beer bottles and jam jar lids are steel and can be recycled.

Screwtop metal caps from soft drinks are usually aluminium (nonferrous) and can be easily recycled with your beer and soft drink cans.

Preferably wash containers,somebody has to handle your rubbish/recyclable resource and if it is too yucky it may end up as landfill.

TYRES:

Did you know that 15 million tyres are disposed of each year in Australia? Greater efforts should be put into generating new uses for the shredded "Hi Tech Rubber Crumb" from these tyres so that new markets can be opened up.There are export markets for this product that can be expanded,but unfortunately much of the so called "recycled rubber" ends up back as "landfill leachate" It has been suggested that this leachate will improve the stability and overall quality of the landfill but it still remains a fact that what goes into the landfills,fills up the land and hastens the day when a new landfill site will be required. More information on this topic can be found by visiting:the websites ofGOODYEAR and ENVIROTYRE.

Alternative uses for tyres include using them as a fuel source e.g. in Victoria BLUE CIRCLE CEMENT uses them in their kilns. They also have been used to create moulded products,road surfacing,sporting surfaces,industrial matting,traffic calming devices,hoses and even new tyres.

COMPUTER RECYCLING

Did you know that the estimated numbers of computers that will have been sent to US landfill by 2005: amount to about 150 million which would fill a football field to a height of about 3 kilometres? source Emag June 2000. Computer recycling is happening:further information visit - the websites of PC.RECYCLERS.NET andPROJECT COMPUTER BANK computer recycling often means that disadvantaged groups and individuals in the community gain access to this medium which probably would be denied to them otherwise. In Tasmania there is a programme for providing recycled computers to disabled,the housebound and seniors called:COMPASSIONATE COMPUTERS

Although reuse options are commendable,many of these computers are still likely to end up as landfill,so actual recycling of individual components is the only sure way of avoiding potential environmental hazards of dumping them at landfill. The toxic materials,dangerous trace elements and heavy metals that they contain pose a serious threat. The plastic covers often contain carcinogenic brominate flame retardant. Lead is in the computer monitor and television picture tubes. Lead can also be found in the soldering on the circuit boards. The circuitry also contains cadmium,mercury & phosphorous.

News from the USA,NBCTODAY,AUGUST 9,2000 is that cooking oils from takeaway food stores are being collected and recycled into a fuel oil known as "BIODIESEL",which in turn is being used to keep Cincinnatti's public buses on the road. Clean Up Launceston will keep you posted on similar recycling of oils in Australia .